


Indigo Eyes, Switchblade Smiles

by Lionescence



Series: A Family Portrait in Indigo [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kogane Family Feels, M/M, Post-S7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27064093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionescence/pseuds/Lionescence
Summary: Before Shiro crashed back down to Earth, Keith had been protecting the Blue Lion.And he hadn't been alone.Years after, the Paladins return to a war-scorched Earth, to their families and the loved ones they left behind. Among them, a man with indigo eyes and the Devil's smile.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: A Family Portrait in Indigo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975222
Comments: 24
Kudos: 145
Collections: Across Realities





	Indigo Eyes, Switchblade Smiles

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Sheith Across Realities zine, which was an utter joy and honour to be a part of. 
> 
> I love Keith's dad. We got enough of him in canon that he deserved a name, dammit. I love writing him so much that this is (hopefully) the first fic of a small (future) collection of Kogane family stories. 
> 
> I've included a bonus scene that I really wanted to include in the AR sketchbook, but I couldn't make it work in time. 
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy it as much I did writing it!

Shiro watches as Pidge throws herself out of her transport, straight into Colleen’s arms, Keith stepping carefully out after her. He watches Sam bundle into them both, his girls together at last. As he helps Allura out of their transport vehicle, he hears the cries of “Uncle Lance!” and turns just in time to see Lance run, slide down on his knees into a pair of children who immediately engulf him; Lance then disappears completely beneath a pile of loved ones.

He watches as Hunk searches, and searches, and searches, and he fears the worst for him.

He hears the voice of a young woman, bright and relieved. “Lance, this is the man who saved my life.”

And then he hears something so unexpected it could have been a dream: “Aw hell, Veronica, I already told you, it weren’t nothin’.”

Shiro snaps his head around the same time he _feels_ —somehow—Keith going tense, back coming ramrod straight. The sharp drag of his heel spinning him around is so loud, it almost drowns out the very quiet, strangled: “Dad?”

Time stops so suddenly that Shiro wonders if he’s gone deaf, with the silence that falls. Keith never spoke about his father while they were out in space, and only briefly confided in Shiro that it was because he worried that it would tie his father directly to Voltron, as father and son had protected the Blue Lion together since Cal and Krolia had discovered her. Much like Krolia, Keith found safety in secrecy: the less anyone knew, the better. Keith still said nothing when they first arrived, seeing the devastation across Plaht City and the surrounding desert, but Shiro saw it then in his eyes.

The fear. The worry. He’d left his father behind out in the desert, alone. He could be anywhere. Or nowhere at all.

But the man standing next to one of Lance’s sisters—herself a Garrison lieutenant—looks up, and Shiro knows for certain. He is older now, greying at the temples, the war and the sun etching more lines on his face, a rifle slung across his back. But he still stands tall, strong, powerful, his eyes the unchanging indigo-grey he loves so well, set in someone else’s face. Shiro sees the moment those eyes comprehend, going wide as his mouth drops open.

“Keith.”

And that’s it. That name, in that voice, spurs Keith into action. He runs, coltish, inelegant and urgent, and Shiro feels the heat behind his eyes and the lump forming in his throat.

_“Dad!”_

Keith had grown a good few inches, upwards and across the shoulders, in his time in the Quantum Abyss. He’d left Earth a lithe, whipcord thing, uncertain and barely a man; he returns now a strong, seasoned warrior, unafraid to claim his space.

But he runs, and throws himself at his father, who catches him around the ribs as if time hadn’t changed them at all. Swings him around once, shouting _"My baby boy!”_ as if he isn’t holding the Leader of Voltron, a Blade of Marmora, in his arms.

It’s Keith’s laugh that starts time moving again.

Shiro knows it’s not a sight the other Paladins expect. It’s easy to forget that Keith, too, is someone’s son; that he, too, had family waiting for him back on a war-torn Earth. So he enjoys the incredulous looks on Pidge, Hunk, and Lance’s faces, the sweet surprise on those of the Alteans, as Keith’s father lowers the Red Paladin to the ground, runs his hands all over him and kisses his hair while Keith buries his face in the crook of his father’s neck, murmuring and sobbing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t want to leave you, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”

“Hush now, little spark. You’re home now, and I’m still here. Takes more’n a little alien invasion to keep me down, oughta know that by now.”

Keith barks out a wet laugh, pulling away to wipe at his eyes with one hand, the other refusing to let go. “Dad, gods, I’m so glad you’re alive. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too, kiddo. And I can see you did good out there,” he says, dropping a huge hand on top of Keith’s head, ruffling the mass of hair. “Now tell me: didja find her?”

A thousand stars can’t compare to the sunbeam smile that Keith gives his father, nodding so hard his hair bounces. “Yeah. Yeah I did.”

“’Course you did,” Cal replied, shaking his head and grinning. “You’re my boy.”

“Wait, Keith has a _dad?!_ ”

The two Koganes turn to stare down at Lance, who is still incredulous, pointing an accusatory finger at the pair. Behind him, his sister sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Shiro snorts when, in a beautifully choreographed motion, both indigo-eyed men narrow their gazes, and arch one elegant eyebrow each.

Cowed, Lance lowers his hand. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, they’re totally related, yeah…”

Even Shiro finds himself laughing at that, enjoying the unified front that Keith and Cal Kogane always put forward, ever since he first knocked on the door of their house in the middle of the desert, hoping to recruit Keith into the Garrison all those years ago. It heartens Shiro to see Keith so soft and smiling, a boy again in the presence of his father. Cal, too, softens around his son, but there is no doubt that they would revert to fire and steel for each other.

“Takashi! That you, boy? Get the hell over here!”

And Shiro can’t resist. Cal was rarely around, never got much opportunity to visit Keith at the Garrison, so he’d fully entrusted Shiro with his only son, in return never hesitating with food and hugs and a warm welcome into his home. After losing his grandfather, after breaking up with Adam, the Kogane homestead was a shelter from the mess that was his own life. Even now, Cal’s massive hand clapping him hard on the back and then mussing through his hair, Shiro feels only like himself: Cal doesn’t seem to see the missing arm, the scar, the silver hair. He only sees a man.

Hopefully, a good man, worthy of his son.

Shiro is still an inch shy of Cal Kogane—and how did a man of that size and his Galra lover make such a tiny boy?—but they meet eye-to-eye, Cal regarding Shiro with an uncommon intensity, one that Shiro hadn’t been subject to since that first meeting outside the man’s door. “So,” he begins, slowly, a low rumble like an oncoming storm, “you make an honest man of my boy yet?”

Somewhere, Lance shrieks, a sound immediately cut off by a smack. Shiro’s ears flame so fast it makes him a little light-headed, and Keith only manages to hiss a loud, _"Dad!"_

His response is an automatic, “Well, sir, I —”

 _“Sir?”_ And there lies Shiro’s mistake, judging by the smirk on Cal’s face, bestowed by the Devil himself, and the spark in his eyes. “Time was, you’d call me Cal. At worst, if we’re insisting on formalities, Mister K. But _‘sir’_? Well now. That tells me somethin’ _very_ interesting.”

Keith’s face nearly matches his armour, and for reasons different to Shiro’s, maybe, looks as though he wants the ground to swallow him whole. Shiro watches his best friend inhale slowly through his nose, exhale, then: “Dad. Mom likes him. Mess him up and she’ll kill you.”

Cal’s laugh roars around the courtyard. “Oh, I don’t doubt that, baby boy. But a dad’s gotta protect his only child’s honour, don’t he?”

“Oh Jesus suffering Christ, Dad…”

“Hey, whoa. I brought you up better’n that.”

“ _You’re_ the one who taught me how to swear!”

Shiro doesn’t know quite how it works—perhaps it’s any sign of agitation, or distress; it could simply be out of love—but the space wolf appears at Keith’s side with a _pop_ and burst of ozone in the air, a low growl rumbling through him as he pushes himself between Keith and Cal.

It’s fair that even a man of Cal’s size and wild-man calibre would take a step back: the space wolf is absolutely capable of taking down a pack of coyotes, perhaps even a mountain lion on his own. He’s the _size_ of a mountain lion, come to think of it. And yet Keith crouches down to the creature, hand in the fur of his scruff, scratching gently. “Easy, buddy. Have a quick sniff—betcha he’ll smell familiar,” he says, the mirth in his voice stripping years off him.

The space wolf takes a couple of steps forward, snuffling the air around Cal before his ears perk up, and he looks between Cal and Keith, tail wagging hard enough to nearly unbalance Keith.

Keith smiles that indulgent smile of his. “There. See?”

Cal, whose hands were so close to drawing his rifle, relaxes, but shakes his head, chuckling. “Aw hell, son. Not again.”

And Shiro could only laugh at Keith’s expression, the face of a boy saying _please Dad can we keep him please_ with the eyes that say _he’s mine I’m keeping him_.

The battle suddenly seems so far away.

When the battle comes, it all goes to hell.

The Atlas holds up the sky—the irony isn’t lost on Shiro—and Voltron comes back to Earth only to fight once more against a RoBeast they’d never seen before. Shiro is helpless in the face of the Paladins’ screams, heart wrenching at the sound of Keith’s, before the Atlas wakes up in his head and tells him what to do.

After she politely says hello, first.

He is swept up into her transformation, into the power he possesses with her, riding the storm of battle until it comes to a halt. The Atlas loses power, falling to her knees. The Lions rush to the sky with the RoBeast, and Keith’s final transmission sinks in.

_“It’s been an honour to fly with you all.”_

No.

_“Now everyone — give it everything you’ve got!”_

No!

He never told him. They didn’t have time. He should have. _He should have._

Shiro has enough presence of mind, enough years of Garrison training, to give out orders: send out the MFEs to each of the fallen Lions with an accompanying ground team—a naval team for Allura and Blue—before he slips into the semi-calm of transforming the Atlas back into a starship because gods only know where the hangars are while she’s a giant robot.

Once he leaves the bridge to Iverson (because Coran fears for Allura, Veronica for Lance, Sam for his only daughter), he bolts for the hangar, searches for a ship, a vehicle, _anything_. He finds a familiar bright red hoverbike, and Cal already astride it. “Well? What’re ya waitin’ for, boy? Get on!”

Shiro doesn’t think twice. He grabs a pair of goggles from a nearby rack and jumps on as Cal lowers his own set and kicks the bike to life, revving it high and loud. At least one of them has a plan.

“Better get yer girl to open the doors.”

_“What?”_

It’s a long way to the bay doors—the closed bay doors—but Cal’s let loose and seems to be accelerating. Fast.

“ _Cal!_ Cal, we’re still at least five hundred feet up —!”

“Doors would be good ‘bout now, kid.”

Shiro forgets that this man is one half of Keith Kogane. _That_ Keith Kogane. Headlong, headstrong. He has seconds before the bay doors meet them; the only difference will be on whose terms.

“Atlas, open the doors! Atlas!” Shiro calls out, feeling as foolish as he is desperate. _“Atlas!”_

The bay doors slide open—Shiro hears a vague giggle in his head—and the hoverbike shoots out into open space, riding currents like a child’s paper airplane beneath the shadow of the Atlas.

“Cal, what the actual—”

“Tell me you and Keith haven’t done stupider. Go on. I’ll believe you.”

Shiro decides that it’s wisest to just hang on, and trust in the same instincts that made Keith the best pilot of his generation. They glide a steady descent, Cal correcting their angle and trajectory every so often with the thrusters or a shift in their weight. Soon the Black Lion comes into view, and the weight in both their hearts threatens to tip them out of the air: she’s lying on her side in the desert dust within a shallow crater a quarter mile wide, a broken child’s toy. Cal and Shiro hit the ground at speed, the hoverbike keeping their lift and absorbing any impact they could have made. They rush on until they reach the Black Lion, Shiro leaping off before they come to a full stop.

“Keith! _Keith_ , answer me!”

He picks his way up to her jaws; he’s nearly hoarse from calling Keith’s name even as his heart continues to scream and scream and scream. His arm is running low on power and he isn’t sure if he could force his way in.

Behind him he hears Cal and a muttering of, “How many times do I gotta use this to rescue my—”

“Cal, _no!_ ”

Shiro just about tackles Cal before the head of the fire axe comes anywhere near the Black Lion. He’d heard this story. That axe cleaved through Krolia’s downed ship, but it won’t do anything to Black. Cal stares at Shiro, silently asking what they need to do, when Shiro looks back up at what used to be his Lion—his prison—and calls out.

“Black. Black, please. Please let us get to him. Let us help him. We—I can’t lose him. Please.”

He thinks back to his time in the astral plane, all the times he watched over Keith, searched for his presence, revelled in it. All the times he promised: _if I ever see you again, I’ll tell you, I won’t let you go_. He digs into his heart and begs and begs and—

A sighing groan rolls around them, and Black’s jaws part, enough for two men, enough to pull out a third.

Cal and Shiro run in, and Shiro doesn’t remember much of anything after seeing the spider-web crack on the screen where a body met it in violence, a shattered helm tossed into a corner, Keith’s broken-doll form lying in a pool of blood. Cal is there, primed by a lifetime of emergency service, professional even in the face of his own son’s life in his hands.

All Shiro knows is this: a medical team arrives, and takes Keith away. Somehow he is holding on to Cal again on the back of the hoverbike, but no matter what he wishes, they go no faster, keeping pace with the rescue team. Keith is whisked away from them just as monitors blare and the air turns frantic, and doors shut them out. Shiro knows he screams and cries and claws at the closed doors—he leaves grooves with his right hand, blood with his left—and it’s Cal who holds him back, holds him down, holds him together.

When his grandfather died, there was himself, there was Cal, and there was Keith. When Adam left him, they were still three. Now they’re two, and Shiro fears they may never be three again.

Shiro walks into the room, and even with his uniform jacket unbuttoned and cuffs undone, away from the stage, the lights, the cameras, the _people_ , he feels stifled.

He can’t breathe so long as Keith remains in a coma.

“Any change?” he asks the man who has remained unmoving from his son’s side since he came out of surgery, handing him one of the two cups of coffee he brings with him.

Cal takes the coffee, doesn’t look up. “Nope. Same as.” He sips, grimaces at the taste. “You did good out there, Takashi,” he says, tipping his head vaguely towards the window. “You give people hope. Captain, now, is it?”

“The rank doesn’t mean anything to me, Cal. Not right now.” He takes his spot in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, places a small case on the bedside table: Commander’s stripes, for Keith. They will mean nothing to Keith, either, if he doesn’t wake up.

He hears Cal hum from across the bed, acknowledging. It’s only with Cal that Shiro knows that his comment won’t be read as ungrateful, dismissive. Shiro knows with utmost security that Cal understands Shiro has more important things on his mind, things more crucial to his heart and soul than the number of stripes on his shoulders. Cal accepts that Shiro doesn’t care about anything else outside of this room, and won’t judge him for it.

It’s only with Cal that Shiro can take Keith’s cold, limp hand in his own, and know that the gesture reads true.

He hears another absent sip of coffee, before Cal sighs. “You love him.”

Shiro doesn’t have to look up to know that Cal is smiling, and that’s what breaks him. Cal is a master of simple truths, and there is nothing simpler or truer. He barely suppresses a sob as he brings Keith’s hand up to his lips, kissing the knuckles gently, wishing, _wishing_ he’d done this before everything went to hell. “I do,” he croaks, holding his tears back. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone, anything.”

There is nothing but silence and the sounds of monitors around them, before Cal speaks. “Lemme tell you something. Krolia, I understood why she left. She and I, we both have the same sense of duty. Honour, if you wanna be all old-fashioned about it. I’d have gone with her, squeezed myself into one of those skin-tight Blades suits, and fought across the galaxies with her.” He reaches out to push some of Keith’s hair out of his eyes, even as they remained closed. “But I had Keith. My duty was to him. Even so, my job meant I wasn’t always there for him. Kid grew up lonely, and I was always sorry for that.

“And then you come along and promise him the stars I spent years tellin’ him stories about,” he says, laughing low and gentle. “I love my son, you know that. And I know he loves me, fiercely. But you make him smile like nothin’ else in the world. That’s a precious thing. I miss that. Damn boy’s shot up near six inches behind my back and got shoulders somewhere and I missed it all.”

“In fairness,” Shiro says, quietly, “I missed it, too, kinda.”

“And that’s what I’m gettin’ at, son,” Cal huffs. “I missed. You missed. So did Krolia. Because the universe is messin’ with us, and because of duty. So don’t let it. You doubt Keith loves you, you’re an idiot. I don’t know what else to tell you—”

Shiro wants to protest, but Cal is in rare form.

“—‘cept for this: duty ain’t nothin’ if you got nothin’ to fight for.”

That stops Shiro, utterly.

“So. You’re right. The rank don’t mean a thing. This war? Not a dime. But you and I, we fight because we know it’s right. Keith fights because he knows it’s right. Thing is, I fight, because I love my boy, and I want him to have a home to come back to. He fights, because he loves _you_. Why do you fight, Takashi?”

The clarity of the answer hits him with the force of a meteor strike. Shiro has fought for his rights, fought to survive, fought to keep a young team alive, and fought to do the right thing. He is owed this. The universe owes him this. Shiro wants. He wants Keith, and he will fight for him.

“Because I love him.”

Cal considers him, leans back in his chair. Reaches for his cup of coffee and raises it in a mock salute. “In which case, you and my boy will be just fine.”

Shiro can’t help himself: he laughs. He laughs and wipes the tears from his eyes and smiles and he couldn’t be more grateful than he is in that moment. Cal laughs with him, and the moment is small and perfect, and if only...

A sigh rattles between them, coming from neither Cal nor Shiro. Both men squeeze the hand they each hold, and each receives a squeeze in return.

Shiro’s heart nearly stops; Cal is on his feet. “Keith? Hey, little spark. You up?”

Keith shifts, as if slowly waking from deep sleep, soft and lazy and incredibly tired. His eyes stay shut, but out of stubbornness rather than unconsciousness. “Mmm. Dad. Leave Shiro alone. Mom’ll get mad. She likes him.”

Cal blinks, and Shiro nearly loses it at how confounded the man looks. Then he softens and runs a hand through Keith’s hair. “All right, all right. I’ll leave him be. You rest now. Wake when you’re ready.”

“’kay,” comes a soft mumble. “Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too, kiddo.”

Keith shifts again, tipping his head towards Shiro, searching for him. Shiro reaches out, cups his scarred cheek, and relishes in the warmth he finds there. “Hey, Shiro.”

“Hey,” and he’s crying again, because he _wants_ and he _loves_. “Come on, you heard your dad. We’ll… we’ll talk when you’re properly awake, okay?”

Keith hums, smiling his impossible smile. “Love you. Always.” And he’s asleep, little puffs of sound leaving him like purrs.

Shiro rises, gently laying the lightest of kisses on Keith’s brow. Across from him, he knows Cal sits quiet and content.

“I love you, Keith.”

_Bonus scene:_

They’re together, three again, talking and laughing quietly over cups of tea. Keith is not allowed caffeine, not for a while, and he would be grumpy about it if not for the fact that somehow, a box of honey rooibos tea was among the things that survived in Shiro’s Garrison storage locker. Shiro watches as Keith blows gently over his cup, cooling the tea, wearing that patient, indulgent smile he reserves for when his father is deep in raconteur mode.

Cal is mid-gesture, half out of his seat, when the door to the room slams open.

“ _Keith!_ Oh, kit, I came as soon as I —”

Keith doesn’t drop his cup when he says, “Mom,” but Cal does leap out of his chair, staggering; Shiro has never seen him so unsteady.

_“Krolia?”_

And Shiro remembers that Cal hasn’t seen Krolia — his lover, the mother of his only son — for nearly twenty years. He thinks about how he — the other he — had reacted to seeing Keith again after just a couple of months, and he can’t begin to fathom how Cal must be feeling.

At the door, Krolia is frozen, wide-eyed. Perhaps like Keith, she’d feared the worst when she heard of the Galra invasion of Earth. She is so used to death that perhaps it never crossed her mind that her lover survived. “By the stars… _Cal?_ ”

A ridiculous notion seizes Shiro and he begins an inhale, but chokes when Keith murmurs over his cup, “Say ‘Dr. Scott’ and your crotch will be wearing my tea.” So he clamps his mouth shut again.

It gets somewhat more surreal when Kolivan pushes his impressive bulk through the door, around Krolia, his stance primed for a fight. “What is it, Krolia? Is Keith all right?”

And when Cal and Kolivan set eyes on each other, Krolia between them, their scowls deepen and the air grows heavy with threat. Shiro knows Cal’s body language simply because he knows Keith’s, and he sees the grounding of Cal’s back foot, the slight lowering and forward tilt of his shoulders: he’s ready to throw down.

During their journey home, after Krolia remained behind with Kolivan, everyone had speculated: had Keith’s mother and the Leader of the Blade of Marmora been together before Krolia fell to Earth? There was clear affection and concern for one another when they’d found each other again, and Shiro recognized it. How could he not, when the way Krolia looked at Kolivan — and Kolivan, her — was no different to how Keith looked at him? But where did this leave Cal?

Shiro looks at Krolia now, and he has never seen her look so confused at a situation, nor so uncertain with two alpha males sizing one another up.

Keith takes a sip of his tea, and sighs. “Dad. Relax. Galra are polyamorous.”

This blandly-spoken statement snaps the tension in the room like an old rubber band. Krolia makes an odd hiccup sort of noise, her blush so evident her stripes blend in with her cheeks. Cal straightens up, half at ease, eyes back on his son; Kolivan only manages to blink.

Shiro had not known this fact. He doesn’t know how it helps.

Cal stares at Keith a moment longer — who inexplicably continues to serenely sip his tea — before turning to reassess the Galra he has never seen before. Shiro watches him look Kolivan up and down, not as a threat, or an opponent, first folding both his arms across his chest before one hand comes up to stroke the stubble on his jaw. It was the same way Cal had assessed Shiro himself, once upon a time. “Huh.”

And just as he did back then, like a bolt of lightning, a half smile cuts across Cal’s face, a switchblade of mischief that lights up his eyes.

“I can work with that.”

Shiro chokes on spit, snorts a laugh, and gracelessly falls out of his chair.

**Author's Note:**

> Keith is a name of Celtic origin, that transferred from being a Scottish last name to a given name in the 19th century. It means 'from the battleground'.
> 
> Cal is short for Callan, of Scottish Gaelic origin. It means 'battle' or 'rock'. 
> 
> I figured they matched that way.


End file.
